“We are showing early signs of success in attracting new business and new talent to WPP. The newly formed VMLY&R, for example, has enjoyed a strong start, with client wins totalling $25 million in its first 90 days.

Read said: “The newly formed VMLY&R, for example, has enjoyed a strong start, with client wins totalling $25 million in its first 90 days.”

In WPP’s preliminary results for 2018, Read acknowledged that 2019 will be “challenging” due to some major client losses the year before.

“As we have said previously, 2019 will be challenging – particularly in the first half – due to headwinds from client losses in 2018. However, we start the year with fewer clients under review than we did in 2018, and investments in creativity and technology will further improve the competitiveness of our offer.”

Last year the holding group suffered a big blow as it lost three global clients in just one week.

“The quality of our creative work has been exceptional, with six WPP spots featuring at this year’s Super Bowl and work such as Grey’s ‘The Best Men Can Be’ for Gillette demonstrating once again the global impact of what we do.”

The comments from Read about the group’s success came despite the company unveiling a 1.3% drop in revenue to $20.795bn (£15.6bn) and an 8.8% EBITDA decrease to £2.3bn.

Meanwhile, the company’s profit after tax is down 8.9% from last year, to £1.96m.

“Our business is performing strongly in Western Continental Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Africa & the Middle East and Central & Eastern Europe, and we are addressing our performance in the United States.

“We are at the beginning of a three-year turnaround plan, but WPP’s new positioning as a creative transformation company with stronger, more integrated, more tech-enabled agencies is already proving effective, having driven several of our recent new business successes.

“As we implement our strategy in 2019 we will continue to put creativity, technology and great work for clients at the heart of our own transformation.”

For its staff costs in 2018, WPP payed £5.710m in wages and salaries, compared to 2017’s £5.832m.

Marc Pritchard revealed at the IAA conference in Kochi recently that aside from some expected social media heat, the ad boosted positive perception for the brand among key audiences and also increased purchase intention for the Gillette brand.

It’s almost as though large companies have realised that baiting the social media trolls helps hugely with virality and PRV.

$25m in first 90 days could also mean “top line” and not revenue my dear (which it probably is) so yes, it sounds all fine and dandy but what’s the point when the nett could be a paltry sum out of the $25m? This is all ‘ad speak’ and you are talking to people who know how to read (no pun intended) behind the lines. Nice hyperbole but you have a tough crowd to win over and so far it isn’t fooling anyone.

They also lost more than $25m from their Pepsi account which was a TOP 3 account for vml (lead agency on Gatorade and lots of other digital assignments). Apparently it was discovered the [Edited under Mumbrella’s community guidelines], makes a change from the agency getting f&@ked by the client I Guess?!?!